Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Then, on reaching the track, or tunnel, down which Mrs Roxburgh had turned on the second day of her visit, the mare scudded into the forest, the drumming of her hooves muffled by leaves and moss. Sometimes a fallen bough snapped so loud it chilled the heart, while low-hanging live branches forced the rider to lie hopefully along the horse’s mane.

Mrs Roxburgh must have closed her eyes, when a sudden spattering of light beyond the lids made her open them. She saw they had entered the clearing where she had lain awhile on the previous occasion, and snoozed, and dreamed her obscure dream. As she was frightened then by the dream, something of a frightening nature was again prepared for her. An object to one side of the track caused the mare to whinge, shy, and half-rear as she leaped sideways.

The rider was not precisely thrown, but slithered free of saddle and stirrup, and landed somehow on one foot before falling spread-eagle on the miraculously soft leaf-mould.

A hedgehog was trundling in amongst the tree-ferns and other more amorphous vegetation. The mare in her panic had rampaged deeper into the bush, after which silence fell.

Ellen Roxburgh found herself sobbing as the cold sweat trickled down between her clothes and skin. Then she lay, occasionally renewing the handfuls of leaf-mould she clawed out of the ground. The ankle she must have twisted on landing, was throbbing, but not dangerously she felt. In between spasms, relief and silence plunged her into a state of invalid bliss.

She had scarcely time to enjoy it when again she heard muffled hoofbeats growing louder along the track her mare had brought her, and here was the chest of the blue roan, the rider’s head held alongside his horse’s neck to avoid the threat of overhanging branches.

The horseman had not yet caught sight of his quarry, but the horse snorted for what must have looked like some vast green bird trailing a disabled wing as it tried to flop its way to safety amongst the ferns.

‘Thank God, Ellen! But have you broken something?’ Garnet Roxburgh was so full of disbelief for their having finally met, his voice trembled.

At the same time a tremulous whinny came from the direction the mare had taken, and Merle appeared by little, furtive, almost repentant steps, and nuzzled first the bit, then the shoulder of the roan cob. The two horses stood squealing back at each other.

As soon as he had jumped down, it was obvious that Garnet Roxburgh could not make up his mind whether to secure the horses first or succour his brother’s wife. He decided on the horses, seeing them tamed and exhausted by the chase. They were easily caught and tied to saplings a few yards apart; it was Ellen who offered difficulties.

Unable to hide or resist, she had turned, and was propped against a bank of immature tree-ferns. She was looking sullenly in a direction other than his.

‘What possessed you’, he asked, ‘to gallop off alone?’

‘Nothing possessed me. I simply rode off on my own, to enjoy a freedom I’ve been denied since I was at “Dulcet”’ she might have added, ‘if not always.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, not altogether humbly, then became more practical. ‘But have you hurt yourself in your fall?’

‘It was not a fall. I jumped from the saddle when my horse took fright — and must have sprained my ankle — very slightly — I would say.’

He was advancing on her. Broken only by the horses easing the bits in their mouths, the silence was thickening round them. She would have continued to cultivate her intention of not looking at her ‘rescuer’, but from glancing along her own bosom, too exposed by the recent crisis, her glance was inevitably drawn to her brother-in-law’s approach.

Garnet Roxburgh appeared both determined and stupefied, as though moves he might have contemplated making at his leisure had galloped instead to meet him; the resulting collision had perhaps unnerved him.

On reaching her he fell on his knees on the mattress of rotting compost. ‘Dear Ellen — are you in pain?’ Their relationship should have permitted the sympathy he was offering, but again she was repelled by the hands, lifting her habit, fumbling for her boot.

It was more than anything sight of her own openwork stocking which roused her to protest. ‘Don’t, please! I’m most obliged. It’s nothing — Garnet.’

Her mention of his name seemed to loosen his self-control. ‘Oh, Ellen — Ellen!’ By now he would have been grovelling if passion had not more positively extended him.

What prevented her feeling afraid was to realize she was the one in control. She thought she heard herself snicker, before contempt (for both of them) made her suppress it.

She was again this great green, only partially disabled, obscene bird, on whose breast he was feeding, gross hands parting the sweeping folds of her tormented and tormenting plumage; until in opening and closing, she might have been rather, the green, fathomless sea, tossing, threatening to swallow down the humanly manned ship which had ventured on her.

Destroying in a last moaning gurgle.

But whom? She could imagine the body of a murdered woman lying thus, a bundle of disarranged clothing, the flesh of a thigh half buried in leaves, the gaping corsage. But in this case the victim was a man, whose dead weight she was supporting, until he sighed, or moaned out of the depths to which he had been dragged. It was his choice, however. The real victim would have been Austin Roxburgh if conscious of the train of events. Of all three, she was the one who had suffered least — as yet; for when she freed her mouth from the mouth clamped to it, and lay contemplating the gently stirring fern-fronds above her, they sprinkled her surfeited skin with a fine moisture, and she closed her eyes again for an instant, to bask beneath the lashes in an experience of sensuality she must have awaited all her life, however inadmissible the circumstances in which she had encouraged it.

But this was only the briefest sensation.

Still covering her, his fingers plaited into her hair, Garnet Roxburgh was ploughing her cheeks mechanically with his, but a changed tension in his body led her to expect accusations.

‘Oh, Lord! What have you done to us, Ellen?’

She would have preferred to accuse herself and later. ‘I was thrown from my horse, and while I wasn’t in my right mind you took advantage of it.’ Hearing her own defence, she knew it to be insufficient, as well as untruthful, but had to escape from what was becoming an increasingly loathsome situation.

Propped on an elbow at her side, he was staring at her, his eyes glazed with an insolent scepticism. ‘If that was not your right mind, we shall never know it!’ he declared and laughed.

While she had to perform, in front of his cynical stare, all the humdrum, the vulgar acts of re-arranging torn clothes, putting up her hair, retrieving by its veil the hat which had rolled amongst the ferns.

Only when she was again veiled could she feel to some extent protected — from Garnet Roxburgh’s eyes, if not from judgment by herself upon herself.

However painful her ankle, and ungainly her movements, she must hobble as far as possible beyond physical contact with the one who was less her seducer than the instrument she had chosen for measuring depths she was tempted to explore.

She reached the sapling to which the now docile Merle was hitched, untied the reins, and succeeded in mounting by making use of a half-rotted log.

Garnet Roxburgh was sitting up, hands dangling in the space between his knees. ‘We make such splendid lovers, Ellen. Won’t you admit it?’

She could only have admitted to carrying away a cold, consummated lust.

‘Wait at least,’ he called, though not expecting her to follow his advice, ‘and we’ll ride home decently together — not slink in from different directions like a pair of sordid adulterers.’